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Pictures of 1921 Thompson at Kilmainham Gaol Dublin.


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Im in Dublin for a few weeks and yesterday I had the chance to

visit Kilmainham Gaol Dublin. It was quite a moving experience.

I highly recommend visiting it while in Ireland.

Also I managed to take few pictures of the Thompson model 1921

Serial # 232 they have on display.

Enjoy!

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Edited by WinSten
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  • 4 weeks later...

Just catching up on posts I missed during my absence from the board over the last month or so.


Serial no. 232 complete with one of the elusive Irish C Drums, what I would not give, regardless of condition, for one of those; it would make a nice display piece with the former IRA model of 1921 in my collection. I read somewhere in the past, that Johns Machine and stamp Co. manufactured a total of 535 ’C’ drums during the first ten weeks of production, and the majority of those drums were shipped to Ireland. So assuming 5,000 ‘C’ drums were manufactured by John’s, at least 11% of those were shipped overseas. Many of the IRA drums, together with the weapons recovered by the Irish and British security forces were eventually destroyed, examples shown in picture below recovered in County Mayo by the Irish Garda in 1942.


Garda 1942 weapons find.jpg Thompsonand drum find.jpg


I wonder if there are more forgotten Model of 1921's, still lying in weapons caches in Ireland.


Regarding the condition of no.232, Maria McGuire, an IRA volunteer, post 1969, recorded her experiences in the book, “To Take Arms, A Year in the Provisional IRA”, which mentions the old Thompsons resurfacing:



"Many of the Irish Thompsons have spent more time under the ground than over it…. I remember a wizened old man came into Kevin Street and produced various parts of a rusty Thompson gun out of a brown paper parcel ‘tis a present form the boys in Cork’ he said. Many IRA men will tell you that the Thompson is their favourite weapon….one of the major faults with the Thompson is that unless it is kept spotlessly clean, (often difficult in combat conditions), it’s prone to jamming; another is that it needs a strong man to handle it, because its barrel should make an imaginary figure of eight around the target; a third is that it has a relatively low velocity and there has been instances in the North of its heavy .45 bullets failing to pierce soldier’s flak jackets”.



No. 282 is not listed in the Model of 1921's discovered on the SS East Side, with their serial numbers intact, so guess it may have been one of the 50 from the earlier P.G. Gentry shipment.



Stay safe



Richard



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Earlier this summer I saw what looked like SN 142 in the Collins Barracks not far away:

 

http://www.machinegunboards.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=23033&&page=2

 

Check it out if you're still there and get a chance. A lot of interesting firearms on display.

 

Robert

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Four of the originals that made their way to New Zealand. Old photos.

http://www.mikesmachineguns.com/files/4_Irish_swords.jpg

Serial numbers are, from front to back, 708, 586,389 & 993.

 

http://www.mikesmachineguns.com/files/irish_sword_side_by_side.jpg

 

http://www.mikesmachineguns.com/files/Irish_sword_2.jpg

 

http://www.mikesmachineguns.com/files/Irish_sword_1.jpg

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